The war falls early this year. The impressive series started on NPO1 on Sunday evening The Jewish Council, about the controversial governance of the Jewish community in the Second World War. In the morning the opening of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam was visible. Also impressive. During the live registration, the NOS switched to the demonstration outside against the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Due to the war in Gaza, the demonstrators thought this was inappropriate. Museum director Emile Schrijver said in his speech: “The raw global news of war and conflict, and the disturbing revival of anti-Semitism, also in the Netherlands, lend a bitter context to this opening.”
The NOS was in different places. Presenter Rob Trip stood in the courtyard of the abandoned museum talking to Bart Wallet, professor of Jewish studies. The main event took place elsewhere, in the Portuguese synagogue where the king and other high ranking officials sat.
After speeches and moody music, those present were shown a film about the museum 700 meters away, which they did not visit live. A bit strange, but it did offer room for a creative interpretation. The video tour of the empty museum was provided by a few teenagers. They told the history, partly in rehearsed dialogues that were light cringe (“The Nazis hate Jews.” “Well, you could say that.”). A tap dancer in a pink-red suit and white shoes tapped in the Hollandsche Schouwburg to piano music by the murdered Jewish composer Dick Kattenburg. A wonderfully cheerful note in the whole. Fittingly –– before the theater was used by the Nazis as a deportation collection point, it was a theater for entertainment.
Moral touchstone
Never again. This invocation was repeated again and again in the speeches. The National Holocaust Museum wants to teach a lesson. The intention is for the Shoah to be used as a moral touchstone for contemporary problems. No more anti-Semitism, was how the king interpreted it. Schrijver and Herzog linked the Shoah to the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel by the anti-Semitic Hamas. Herzog managed to connect a Dutch story about people in hiding with a fallen Israeli major in Gaza, who was the son of one of the people in hiding.
What about Gaza? Can you also compare that with the Shoah? The protesters outside thought so. They stood in front of the museum shouting at the king, waving Palestinian flags. In Gaza, they found, a genocide is now also taking place. A Jewish woman held a banner: ‘Jews against Israel’. Another demonstrator explained: “The museum stands for that we never look at people that way again, that we never again dismiss our fellow human beings as inferior and as animals.”
You should not abuse the Holocaust, Schrijver said in his speech. “Don’t do that, nowhere, never.” But when is it abuse and when is it a justified referral? And what should you do if both parties object? In practice, the Shoah repeatedly proves to be too big and too charged to serve as material for comparison.
The opening was performed by survivor Rudie Cortissos who, together with his great-granddaughter, stuck a mezuzah (case with Torah verses) on the doorpost. The strongest moments in this broadcast were those in which the enormous historical event was given a human face. No big words, no politics – just people gone forever, and one person left behind.